Conversations in Veterans’ Studies: “Veteran” as a Post-Labor Category

The emerging field of veterans’ studies is promising due to its interdisciplinarity. Yet lenses of war, injury, and policy dominate how veterans and their experiences are examined. While these elements of inquiry do tremendous work in expanding our understanding of some veterans’ experiences, these angles can inadvertently reinforce tropic narratives and/or be limiting, regarding the complexity by which we can conceive of veterans as social beings, epistemic agents, and professionals. Thus, I argue that an in-depth consideration of military service as a labor form is fundamental to the conversations of veterans’ social identity. Focusing on military service qua labor encapsulates critical factors of being, doing, knowing, and relating, which can act as theoretical connective tissue for the various disciplinary perspectives in veterans studies allowing for a more dynamic picture to unfold.